The Language Barrier

We arrived in Leipzig and parked the car as close to our AirBnb as possible due to a road closure. We finally found our room and by god it was beautiful. We had two rooms to ourselves for the first time on the tour and we had a jacuzzi bath which Brendan sampled and emerged grinning like a kid on Christmas. We also finally had Wifi again, our night in the castle had burnt through most of our data allowance.

We headed out to the venue which was basically a backyard / hipster trailer park equipped with pizza ovens, a mobile bar and a small shack which they use for music in the winter. As it was a hot day (touching 30 degrees) we were to set up in-front of the shack and play to people while they drank / ate. We met our host Jan (pronounced Yan); a friendly German band shirt wearing rocker with black painted fingernails and went to grab some food. What happened next was what can only be described as an absolute atrocity.

We had an hour or so to kill before we were due on stage. Brendan suggested that we went for a Chinese around the corner, I wasn’t too sure as we were pushed for time and also a Chinese can be famously hard and confusing to order anyway; never mind when you don’t speak the language. Nevertheless us ignorant Brits marched in, sat down and confidently opened up the menu before realising the depth of our peril. We didn’t understand a single word.

To this point we’d got by off speaking English, smiling innocently and relying (extremely ignorantly) on other peoples English skills. But here, we didn’t stand a chance. We were completely out of our depth. The waitress came over to our table asking us if we were ready to order and we all just looked at her blankly and tapped on a menu, nodding and smiling and hoped she didn’t ask any questions. This failed dramatically. We ordered a sparkling water which none of us wanted and three meals that only slightly resembled what we were expecting. We were in hysterics. None of us wanted to take the lead in the situation because we could literally only communicate by tapping on menus at things that looked mildly familiar, (we thought Chicken Chow Mien would be pretty universal but we were wrong.) We tipped the waitress very well for her time which we well and truly wasted and then left with our tail firmly between our legs.

The gig was another tough one, Chris opened up the show and really struggled. The owner wanted the music to be so quiet it was barely audible, Chris’ songs wholly rely on people understanding what he’s saying (and hearing it) so it was a tough gig for him. I played well and seemed to turn a few heads but once again struggled with the language barrier and volume. The police arrived half way through and told the owner that the music was too loud (it was already barely audible.) It was a fun show in the end, we just had fun with it and enjoyed ourselves on stage; not taking it super seriously but equally putting on a good show. We did well on the hat fee bringing in €150 for the show from a pretty damn small audience who didn’t understand what we were saying.

We got back to the flat late and were faced with a brutally early start the next morning for a long drive down to Munich so crashed out around 2am after a Jacuzzi bath each and awoke all too soon at 6.30. The drive was long but I slept for the vast majority of the journey and took over to do the last 2 hours down the motorway and into Munich.

We parked up in Munich and stepped out of the car to be hit full on in the face by the sheer heat. Today was 32 degrees. We changed into shorts and waited for the venue owner to arrive. The area looked ROUGH. There were cars parked all around with graffiti all over them, flat tyres, glass on the floor. Right by the venue was a trailer park with a few beach bum / surfer style guys sitting out on the steps of their trailers smoking weed. We rang the venue owner and pulled in to the venue to unload our stuff. We learnt that tonights gig would be another outdoor one, which was very exciting for us because, while it did look a bit daunting, all the graffiti and the containers made for one hell of a setting to play in. It was like playing a gig inside a level from Tony Hawks Pro Skater. We did a live stream on Chris’ facebook for promo and then went in to check out Munich (we only had an hour or so but wanted to see as much as we could.)

Our time in the centre of Munich was short but sweet. We basically wandered around Marienplatz for 30 minutes or so, grabbed a Bratwurst for tea and checked out the Frauenkirche (we walked in one side and straight out the other.) We hung around for as long as we could before grabbing a tram back to the venue for soundcheck and the gig. We met our host for the evening Lidl Loops, who would play in-between our sets and welcome us to the stage. Lidl (Real name Martin) had the most expansive set up I’ve ever seen for an act of that nature. We then got showed to our sleeping quarters for the night.

We’d be staying in on of the trailers mentioned above. It was hidden away in the centre of a wall of containers and was fully equipped with, a double bed, a hammock hanging from container to container and a mini library filled to the brim with medical books and Karl Marx writings. It was pretty hilarious. I’ve slept in worse. One standout being a trailer in a locked yard next to a nightclub behind the prison in the Scottish city of Perth with no running water, a walk down the road to the nightclubs toilets and the least secure parking space I’ve ever seen. Touring isn’t always as unpleasant as this makes out though; I’ve stayed in some phenomenal places and had breakfast with celebrities touring. At the end of  the day you take what you can get and it’s all an experience. I’d never turn my nose up at anything. People are just people at the end of the day. If they live in a mansion or live in a trailer in a scrapyard in Munich; if we sat down and talked for 20 minutes or so I’m sure we’d find some common ground to bond over.

We emerged from the trailer to get ready for the show only to realise (fairly surprisingly) the venue was really filling up. A constant stream of people were coming through with smiles on their faces and filling the seats set out in-front of the stage ready to be entertained.

Well then, here we go. The first properly busy show of tour. There must’ve been 150 odd Germans waiting for us to play. It was time to take our little show to the international audience on a larger scale and get this show properly on the road. Hit with a new wave of determination; we grabbed a beer.